


Close Call

by lodessa



Series: Assorted Tumblr Prompts [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: Following a near death experience, Brienne misreads Jaime's intentions.   (Modern AU)





	Close Call

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janie_tangerine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/gifts).



> Written for the magnificent [janie_tangerine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine) who sent me the prompt of _J/B with “You look like you could use a hug.”_ based on a set of dialogue prompts I reblogged on Tumblr. I thought I'd take a little step into your wheelhouse, my friend.

“You look like you could use a hug,” he says before he realizes the words are coming out of his mouth.

“I’m fine,” Brienne snaps, pulling further in on herself than she already was with her arms crossed over her chest, looking like he’s just insulted or mocked her instead of offered sympathy.

Her wispy straw colored hair has escaped the confines of the sensible braid she always has it bound into, and her shoulders are stretching the seams of the t-shirt they gave her in place of her own clothes, which will have been bagged as evidence, what with all the blood spattered on them. She must be in shock. He knows he is.

“You are?” he can’t resist scoffing, needing her to say something. “I sure as hell am not. How could I be, after the woman who hired us pointed a gun at your head and told you that if you didn’t shoot me she’d kill you and Pod and half a dozen other bystanders?”

 _Can’t we talk about what you said in there?_ he doesn’t ask. She’d shocked him with her confession but he thinks perhaps she shocked herself almost as much. He doesn’t want to push her into a retraction by forcing the issue, not when… not when he’s finally seeing myself clearly.

“She didn’t. I didn’t,” she stammers.

“Only because you shot her in the head,” he points out.

“I had to…” she swallows and he thinks he had never met anymore better capable of self judgement than himself until he met her.

“I’m not blaming you… I just… good god, Brienne. We nearly all died and you are trying to tell me you’re just fine?!”

_Talk to me. Why now, of all times, won’t you talk to me?_

“Go home, Jaime. Go back to KL like your sister has been so desperately texting you to this whole while. You fulfilled your promise and… I don’t need your pity.”

Oh. So that is what this is about. Brienne is being either selfless or guarded, or maybe both. But she couldn’t be more wrong about what he wants, about his motivations and he can’t stop himself from telling her.

“I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back to her.”

She looks as though he hit her in the face. Shocked and shaken.

“I thought that was the only thing you cared about?”

“Not anymore,” he needs her to understand. “Not for a long while, if I am being honest with myself.”

“Jaime…” she says as he reaches out to touch her shoulder. 

He looks into her bright blue eyes and wonders how he could never have thought she was anything less than awe inspiring to look at.

“I hoped you would shoot me,” he admits. “I hoped you’d do it; because, I’d rather be dead than live in a world without you, Brienne.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” she pulls away. “Can’t you just forget what I said in there? I thought we were all going to die or I would never-”

 _No!_ she’d cried out, her voice full of gut wrenching anguish which was impossible to mistake. _Shoot me if you must, but leave him alone. I’d rather be dead than live on having let him die._

“I’m not making fun of you, damnit,” he sighs in frustration. “Look at me, Brienne. Am I laughing? Do I seem like I’m joking to you?”

She does look at him then, as if seeing him anew.

“You can’t mean-” she shakes her head in disbelief.

 _The hell with it,_ he thinks, not so much before as at the same time he grabs the back of her head and pushes up onto his toes, dragging her face down to his.

Brienne makes a sort of choking sound, but she doesn’t push him away (and she easily could), and after a moment her hands move into his hair as she kisses him back. 

“I’m yours,” he tells her, as they pull apart breathing heavily. “I will always be yours.”

She hugs him close then, pressing his head to her chest and he can feel her begin to sob.


End file.
